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in the aetiological myth of the Vinalia as well as the foundation legends of Erycina’s temples would have operated in the general perception of the significance of the day, side by side with the motif of a festival of prostitutes. It might appear to us, as it did to the ancient exegetists, to have been a muddle. But it was a ritual muddle, as much part of the nature of the day as licentiousness was part of the Floralia. The cult of Venus Erycina appears to have taken the ideology of inclusion to its logical limits.

VENUS AND BONA DEA

We come full circle back to Plutarch’s question: why was myrtle excluded from the rites of Bona Dea? Or to put it another way, why were Venus and Bona Dea so incompatible that the incompatibility had to be ritually demonstrated?

Venus and Bona Dea represented different ways in which ritual categories were treated in cult. The cults of Venus integrated disparate and apparently unrelated categories within a single ritual entity. Venus’ most enduring characterization as the goddess of sexual love was, I have suggested, just one facet of a broader function of integration. The hallmark of the festival of Bona Dea, by contrast, was its elaborately flaunted exclusiveness. I suggest that the rejection of myrtle from the cult was an affirmation of this distinction. It represented a deliberate distancing of the cult from the ideology of integration represented by Venus.

Plutarch’s was not the only attempt, as we saw, to explain the exclusion of myrtle from the festival of the Bona Dea: the two stories of Faunus and Bona Dea were also used for this purpose. Macrobius describes Bona Dea as the daughter of Faunus, who refused her father’s incestuous advances and was beaten by him with twigs of myrtle. Hence myrtle was excluded from her rites. We can give an account of this in terms of the integrative function of Venus. The beating with myrtle symbolized the attempt to draw together the opposite ritual categories of male and female. But we are dealing here with incest. Incest, particularly between father and daughter, could never be mediated by any ritual device.59 Even Venus could not bring those two categories together. This seemingly trivial story was in fact a powerful rejection of the integrative function of Venus and a legitimation of the function of exclusion for which Bona Dea

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stood. It provided an account of one aspect of human behaviour that never could be reconciled.

The second myth which has been transmitted by Plutarch, Arnobius and Lactantius provided a somewhat weaker exegesis for the rejection of the integrative principle. Bona Dea is here the wife of Faunus, who was beaten by him with myrtle twigs for drinking wine. I have argued that wine was to be understood as a symbol of the male principle, which was overtly at least excluded from Bona Dea’s rites. By drinking wine Bona Dea undermined the principle of separation of gender categories on which her rites were based. Here myrtle was used to punish a ritual offence rather than as an instrument to force the commission of one. It was an apt punishment, for myrtle was the symbol of an ideological position that the cult of the Bona Dea eschewed. As an instrument of chastisement its effect was to identify the nature of the offence: that is the failure to respect the boundary between male and female. Its function in this myth as in the other one was to distance the two competing ideologies of Venus and Bona Dea.

The cults of Venus viewed in these terms play a very important role in the dynamics of the Roman religious system. In their variant treatment of ritual categories the cults of Venus provided a foil to those defined by exclusivity. The dynamic interplay of function between these various cults constituted a system of meaningful interrelations which formed the very basis of Roman religion.

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INTRODUCTION TO

CHAPTER 4

The Vestal Virgins were Rome’s most extraordinary religious phenomenon. At any given time there were six Vestals who might range in age from early childhood to extreme old age. A newly selected Vestal had to be between six and ten years old and was committed to serve for a period of thirty years. After that she was free to leave the priesthood but could choose to serve until her death. Many chose to remain. The Vestals were virgins extraordinaire. Virginity was not merely a necessary attribute of the Vestals, it was reified. Individually and collectively the Vestals were an embodiment of virginity. This chapter explores the reasons for this phenomenon and its implications for the Roman collectivity.

The most conspicuous aspect of the priesthood was the live interment of a Vestal who was suspected of having lost her virginity. This fact more than any other underscores sharply the extraordinary character of the Vestals. Suspicions of unchastity and its almost inevitable aftermath—burial alive—arose typically during periods of political instability. The loss of a Vestal’s virginity was a sign that all was not well with the state’s relationship with its gods. The only way that that relationship could be repaired was by the ritual of live interment. A Vestal’s perceived physiological virginity had a tremendous power. It was a signifier of the political stability of the state as well as the instrument which restored stability when crisis threatened. Two questions inform the analysis of this chapter: First, how was the physiological fact of virginity transformed into this extraordinary power? Second, what was the essential character of this transformed virginity? Did it have some ritual purpose besides its function of maintaining political stability?

Ritual and legal rules combined to create an artificial entity called

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a Vestal Virgin—virgo vestalis—from a little girl who was ten years old at most. The most important and most conspicuous of the ritual rules was the injunction to observe uncompromising chastity. In a society where procreation was of fundamental importance, this injunction alone served to set these women apart from their fellows. But it was complemented by legal rules which were unique to the Vestals and had the effect of setting them apart not only from female citizens, as the injunction to virginity did, but from male Roman citizens too. In this chapter I examine the way in which ritual and law operated in tandem to set the Vestals apart from every other ritual category and to render them unique.

Finally an analysis of the most important of the Vestals’ ritual duties suggests a reason for this complex construction of the Vestal and shows why she was supremely qualified to be a signifier of political stability. My thesis is that because the Vestals were set apart from the collectivity and could not represent any single ritual category, they were able to represent the whole. In a ritual sense the Vestals were Rome.

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the arena was by no means an unfamiliar spectacle in ancient Rome. Therefore Plutarch’s description of the execution of a Vestal Virgin convicted of losing her virginity is, to say the least, unexpected. What surprises is the evocation of an atmosphere of sombreness surrounding the meticulous ritual of execution. Particularly poignant is the description of the heavy silence, born of overwhelming emotion, which must have been in such marked contrast to the everyday bustle and din of the city.

The Vestals were different; different from any other phenomenon of Roman life or ritual. They were six women ranging in age from early childhood—a new Vestal had to be between six and ten years old—to middle age and beyond. They were defined by their virginity. Indeed they could be described as virginity personified. There was no such thing as a non-virgin Vestal. Such a phenomenon was a dangerous anomaly and was made to disappear from the Roman state in the fashion Plutarch so vividly describes. The most striking aspect of the implications of a Vestal’s virginity, however, is that it was largely taken for granted. Ancient writers scratched their heads over why myrtle was excluded from the cult of Bona Dea, but nobody asked why it was just these six women and no others who were so cruelly put to death if they were suspected of losing their virginity. Nobody asked, because everybody knew the answer: the Vestals were different.

But how were they different and why were they different? The Vestal Virgins have been the object of a great deal of careful scholarly scrutiny in modern times. But modern scholars, like their ancient counterparts, also largely take for granted the injunction that the unchaste Vestal must be buried alive, as well as the circumstances of the burial. But this is not only the most striking aspect of the priesthood, it is extraordinary even in the context of the Roman religious system itself. In no other instance that we know of was the transgression of a ritual injunction ever punishable by death. The lack of collective emotion on ritual occasions was until fairly recently considered good enough reason to deny Roman ritual the status of religion. The burial of the unchaste Vestal, as Plutarch represents it at any rate, appears to violate both norms. What was the special significance of the virginity of the Vestals and why did the loss of it provoke so extraordinary a reaction?

The starting point of such an inquiry must be the ritual of interment. This is the most salient feature of the Vestal phenomenon, and the one most frequently alluded to in the ancient literature. Histori-

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cal accounts are peppered with references to Vestals put to death on suspicion of unchastity. Moreover the ritual never changed. For a Vestal Virgin the consequences of a determination that she was no longer a virgin were always the same: live interment.

The first thing to note is the complexity of the ritual. The ritualistic nature of the punishment of the Vestal is all the more striking when compared with the way her alleged lover was punished. He was publicly flogged to death, without ceremony as far as we can tell.1 The manner of the Vestal’s punishment was in fact used to construct an elaborate fiction—the fiction that the unchaste Vestal, who was killed for her loss of virginity, was not really killed at all. The underground chamber into which she descended was provided ‘with very small portions’—i.e. symbolic quantities—of what is necessary to sustain life. There was clearly no realistic assumption that these would keep the woman alive for any length of time, yet by a ritual fiction she was not actually put to death. She went down the steps ostensibly of her own accord, into a—symbolically—habitable room. The pontiffs averted their gaze and did not see her descend. Finally, all traces of the chamber were erased.2

What was the ritual nature of an unchaste Vestal? Wissowa’s suggestion, which has gained wide acceptance, was that she was regarded as a prodigium, ‘like a two-headed child or any of the other indications given to the Roman people of unhealthy relations with heaven’.3 But others have pointed out that there are fundamental differences between the nature of prodigia and unchaste Vestals.4 Most significant from the perspective of the present discussion are the differences in procedure that were used to respond to the problem of prodigia and the problem of the unchaste Vestal. First, prodigia were usually dealt with by the decemvii and the haruspices.5 There are instances where some of the expiatory rites were recommended by the pontiffs, but these were rare. However, it was the pontifical college alone that tried and condemned a suspected Vestal. This is of fundamental importance. Of the haruspices’ involvement in expiation of prodigies, MacBain writes, ‘In no other society, ancient or modern, has a priesthood of foreign nationality been permitted to enjoy such an intimate relationship to the religious

—and sometimes political—life of the people.’6 We shall see shortly why it would have been inappropriate to have ‘foreign’ religious functionaries involved with the regulation of the Vestals. The second point is the manner in which an unchaste Vestal was disposed of. Unfortunates born with marked physical deformities such as so-

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called two-headed children, or children without eyes or noses, or androgynes, were from time to time labelled prodigia and destroyed. However, the manner of their disposal contrasted markedly with the manner of the disposal of an unchaste Vestal. Androgynes, for example, whose status as prodigia was based on their ambivalent sexual status, were cast out of the city. Most of the cases recorded by Obsequens were sewn up in sacks and thrown into the sea.7 The unchaste Vestal, however, was buried within the city. This is all the more remarkable because there was a rule going back to the XII Tables that nobody’s remains must lie within the boundaries of the city.8 The Vestals were the only category in whose case the exception to the rule was the norm. Apparently, the Vestal who had transgressed and thereby put the state in the gravest jeopardy nevertheless retained the privileges granted to her colleagues, who by guarding their virginity guaranteed the state’s peace and prosperity. Finally, according to Plutarch, priests—hiereis—made offerings to the dead Vestals—the ones who had been buried alive, that is—at the spot where they were buried.9 The interpretation of an unchaste Vestal as a prodigium raises more problems than it solves.

Significantly—and this is perhaps the most important factor relating to the punishment of a Vestal—the burials typically took place during times of severe political crisis. Tim Cornell observes that we have only two recorded instances of Vestals being punished for unchastity during the period between the first Punic war and the end of the Republic.10 The two instances occurred in 216 and 114 BC. Both took place against the background of intense emotional upheaval following news, on each occasion, of the annihilation of the Roman army. It is striking that not only are these the only two known examples of execution of Vestals for this period, but that they also coincide with two of the three known instances of human sacrifice ever recorded in Rome.11 On each occasion two Greeks and two Gauls were buried alive in the Forum Boarium. This was a source of embarrassment to Livy at least, who described it as something uncharacteristic of Roman ritual.12 From a modern perspective there might appear to be an analogy between the burial of the unchaste Vestal and the burial of the victim of human sacrifice. All were victims of the current crisis and ensuing panic. But it is important that Livy appears to see no such analogy. The burial of unchaste Vestals was a necessary, even vital part of Roman ritual, but the